One Irish Rooter's Fan-ifesto

I'm not sure why I'm writing this post, two weeks out from the college football season, always the best sports season of the year. (I'll defend that argument against anyone, by the way - college football is the only sport I can legitimately enjoy even when my team is trash. I know because I did so, in 2007, when my team went 3-9.)

But we're getting close to the season again, and with that, college football fans know, come the usual avalanche of feces that is thrown at anyone who dares to have aligned themselves with Notre Dame football when they were too young to know how evil that would make them according to some.

Since the idea of ND competing for the title again is pretty much out of the question, and for once through little fault of its own (thanks again for cheating on an exam, Golson), things might be quieter on that front than usual. Nevertheless, I feel the time is right - or maybe it's just because these ideas popped into my head last night right before bed - to examine some of the most common tropes used to attack Irish fans (as well as, at least in my opinion, the most rational rebuttals I can think of). If you're a fan and you haven't seen these used against you, well, you are fortunate.

Let's dive in:

"Notre Dame couldn't compete in the SEC!" - This trope is not, unlike the others we'll look at, unique to Notre Dame. This argument has been used against pretty much every national championship contender that's not from the SEC for about the last half-decade, most annoyingly so when it was lobbed at Boise State's 2010 team that rolled through the WAC schedule before its unbeaten dream was dashed by Nevada. (Never mind that mostly that same Boise team turned around and beat Georgia in the next year's opener, on the road, when Georgia won 10 games that season.)

But it's most loudly been used of late against Notre Dame, and those cries only got louder after Alabama defenestrated the Irish in last year's championship game, a contest that was essentially over after 4 drives.

There are several ways to address this complaint.

1) What SEC schedule is this hypothetical ND team playing? Because most of the top teams in the SEC play a maximum of three actual good teams in conference play. Georgia last year, for instance, played two teams with a pulse in regular-season league play: South Carolina and Florida. They got destroyed by the Gamecocks and needed the Gators to turn the ball over approximately eleventy-gajillion times to beat them. And yet Georgia faced Alabama in December with a shot at the national title. (If you're looking for a team like that this year, I offer Alabama, South Carolina and Texas A&M. Each of those SEC contenders plays the two other good teams in their division — and pretty much nobody else who's projected to be any good in the league.)

If ND faced a schedule like that last year (the third-best team Georgia faced in 2012 was freaking Vanderbilt), they probably don't go 12-0, but it's pretty ridiculous to assume they'd have gone 6-6 or something.

2) How much benefit does ND get from playing in the SEC? This hypothetical scenario never seems to account for the large jump in revenue ND would get if they were to play an SEC schedule. The SEC makes a nice chunk of change more money than the Irish, and one could only imagine how high the league's rights fees would go if ND was playing in the league. In addition, an ND program that was playing in the SEC would draw even more interest than it does now from elite recruits in the South (this is, actually, part of the reason ND agreed to the 5-games-a-year commitment to play the ACC in football - it moves ND's footprint into this fertile recruiting region).

But most importantly:

3) Nick Saban and Urban Meyer. Those two have won five of the seven SEC championships in the league's current title streak. The other two titles were won by LSU in 2007, who needed an apocalyptic turn of events in the top five over the season's final couple of weeks to even get to the title game, and by Auburn in 2010, who was playing a QB who, let's be honest, was probably being paid to be there.

Now, this is hardly a slight to the SEC. The league (or at least Alabama and Florida) deserves credit for bringing in those coaches and investing in them. But the implied argument I hear so often that SEC players are inherently better than everybody else doesn't hold much water. They're better because geniuses like that are coaching them.

Nick Saban in particular seems to have a wizardry for competing in games for which he has ample time to prepare. In recent years, Alabama has handled Clemson, Virginia Tech and Michigan in season openers. (Get ready for round 2 in two weeks, Hokies.) And in national championship games, he's prepared teams to cream Texas, LSU and Notre Dame.

LSU? Wait a second. Aren't they in the almighty SEC? Didn't they beat Alabama that same season? Didn't they almost beat them again last regular season? (Yes, yes and yes.) People were ready to throw dirt on ND as a legitimate team after Bama crushed them without taking a look at what Saban did to LSU the year before. They made LSU look even worse than they made ND look a year later in Miami. (The score was more lopsided, but that is largely because LSU had a better defense in 2011 than ND did last year - or most any team besides Alabama has had in any recent year, for that matter.)

Now, I'll add a disclaimer here - to some extent, I understand why everyone wanted to throw dirt on ND even apart from the whole 'everyone hates them' thing. We as sports fans always assign extra meaning to playoff games, especially in football, and if you come up small in the playoffs, we'll kill you for it (see: Manning, Peyton). So even if I disagree with the "Bama would have destroyed ND 100 times out of 100" narrative, I at least understand where it comes from, because I've made similar pronouncements after postseason football games before.

Moving on:

"ND has stupid/arrogant/classless fans!" - This one is a favorite of the hater crowd. The answer is simple. The answer is "you're damn right they do".

The majority of sports fans in general are kind of stupid and ignorant (at least when it comes to discussing sports). Most people don't care as much about the teams they follow as I do mine or you do yours and don't care to go too in-depth knowing about any issue. You can argue as to the relative merits of said people, but it's just a fact.

As the biggest fan base of any college sports team in the country (I'm pretty sure it's safe to say that), ND by definition is going to have more stupid/arrogant/classless fans than any other fan base, presuming an equal distribution of stupidity.

Is arrogance (or at least 'sports arrogance') an inherent trait of ND fans? Maybe to some extent. The same could be said of New York Yankees fans, University of Michigan fans, Duke University fans, Pittsburgh Steelers fans or the fans of any other historically successful team. It's just part of the beast.

For the record, though, the most common usage of the "ND fans are arrogant" trope that I myself have noticed over my years is generally after said ND fan has taken some unprovoked (and generally unjustified, if not factually inaccurate) potshot regarding the team and responded with their opinion. Maybe that's just me.

"Manti Te'o was in on the hoax!" - This is just one of those things where people are going to believe what they want to believe, which is why ND fans generally think he wasn't in on it and why haters generally think he was.

I really don't care much anymore, since Te'o is gone from ND now, but I've read over and over and over on the Te'o subject (believe me), and other than the fact that he's on record as having lied about aspects of his fake online girlfriend and the spurious "80 percent sure" claim that Deadspin reprehensibly ran with even though they didn't even think enough of it to attribute it to anyone in particular, there really is zero evidence that Te'o was in on this stupid thing.

And that's coming from someone who was at the least leery that Te'o had done something fishy when the story first came out. I didn't change my mind on the matter until AD Jack Swarbrick came out with both barrels in his certainty that Te'o had been hoaxed (because he had nothing to gain from endorsing Te'o so publicly and everything to lose if it had come out that he'd been in on it) and I did some more reading. The conclusion was simply that the idea that the best player on the Notre Dame football team would need to invent a girlfriend and kill her off for more attention was outright ludicrous.

"Notre Dame kills people!" -  Look. There's no way to defend certain aspects of the Declan Sullivan and Lizzy Seeberg cases. I don't want to, because A) they were both horrible tragedies, and B)  there's very little that can be said (particularly re: Sullivan, an extremely black-and-white, "ND was dumb" issue). But at least, go find a factual rundown of the Seeberg events (not one written by Melinda Henneberger - I've read most of her articles on the matter, and she's more than happy to lead you to factually incorrect assumptions in the name of making you more outraged at ND - trust me, there's plenty to hammer them about without lying) and come at me with those, and not some half-ass "she was raped and then forced to kill herself" nonsense. Thank you.

No easy transition, so we'll just jump back to football...

"Notre Dame is greedy!" - This one kind of gets more and more laughable by the year. This one is basically entirely predicated on ND's NBC contract, a historically unprecedented deal that will never again be equaled because college football increasingly is moving away from over-the-air TV.

I say it's laughable because...look at what every conference is doing. Those conferences that everyone says ND should join, but they're too greedy? They all have (or will soon have) cable networks. Cable networks that take money out of your pocket every month regardless of whether you're actually interested in the product.

I pay a buck a month to the Big Ten Network. I don't care one iota about that conference unless my alma mater, Ball State, is playing one of their teams. And yet I have to pay that money to have DirecTV. And if you don't pay it? Guess what - you don't get to watch most of your team's games. And if your conference's (or team's, in Texas' case) can't strike a deal with your favored TV provider, you can't watch your team anyway.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame's home games have never, not once in the history of the NBC deal, taken a penny out of your pocket via cable bills. ND could probably get more money if they bid out their content to Fox or ESPN and put their games on cable. But they don't want to. They get more exposure now.

You can argue that the exposure leads to more money, and you're right. But come on, arguing college sports is laced with greed is kind of like arguing that you need to breathe oxygen to live - everyone knows it. At least ND's greed isn't directly taking money away from you. Last season, all 12 of ND's regular season games were on national, over-the-air television. (Ironically, only the national-title game was on pay cable.) I don't think that's ever happened before in college football. And it probably won't ever happen again.

"Notre Dame wants to play by different rules!" - This is a cousin of the greed thing because both stem from ND's football independence. College football fans are simply irate that Notre Dame doesn't need to join a conference to have a shot to play for the national title, or to be financially viable.

Hey, guys. Here's a tip: Your school doesn't have to be in a conference either. There is absolutely no rule that says an FBS school has to be in a conference to win a title. (You can't join FBS without a conference, apparently, which I didn't know until like a week ago, but current FBS schools don't have this requirement.)

Notre Dame isn't in a conference because they don't have to be. Michigan, Texas, Alabama - they probably don't have to be either. Each of those programs, and several others, could probably leave their league, bid out their football home games, and get similar sweetheart treatment. They won't, because being independent in football makes things more difficult. Maybe not on the field, but certainly in other sports, where you have to find a willing partner for your other teams, and in scheduling, where the conference office doesn't take care of 3/4 of your schedule for you.

Hell, do you really think that if, for some reason, the Big Ten was faced with the choice of either letting Michigan go football-independent and leaving their other sports there or losing its affiliation with the school entirely, that it would say 'sayonara'? Because I don't. But that's not the path Michigan chooses. Same for Texas, or Alabama, or USC, or whoever. And that's fine. Neither I nor any other ND fan begrudges a school that choice. But I missed the part where being in a conference gives you de facto superiority over a school that's not in one. If one of the other brand-name schools wanted to give what ND does a shot, they would. But they don't.

And for crying out loud, please stop complaining about the ACC deal ND got. It's not as favorable as the one they had with the Big East, for one thing (just ask Michigan, who ND shunted off the schedule to make room for all the ACC teams they now have to play), and for another, the ACC wouldn't have agreed to it if they weren't getting significant value out of it (and they are). These leagues are run by big boys. They can make their own decisions.

"ND hypocritically treats their athletes as being above the law!" - This one is relatively recent because Brian Kelly has managed to obtain more latitude with regard to disciplinary measures. It largely stems from Michael Floyd being allowed to play after getting a DUI (his third alcohol-related infraction) the March before his senior season. To a lesser extent, people (at least some I know) have complained that Tommy Rees and Carlo Calabrese got off light after their drinking escapades last spring - missing one game each.

The problem with this argument is that the way ND dealt with these issues before was unnecessarily draconian. Kyle McAlarney, a basketball player, GOT KICKED OUT OF SCHOOL for a semester - missing a conference season - because he had a joint in his car. That's really kind of insane when you think about it, especially since opinion on the matter of marijuana has changed so significantly in recent years.

To use another example, Will Yeatman, a reserve tight end during the Weis era, was basically exiled after being caught drinking and walking back to his house one spring. He wasn't even underage!! He ended up transferring to Maryland to play lacrosse, I think.

It was long past time to re-examine the disciplinary measures ND takes, and they finally did when Kelly arrived. Floyd's was the first high-profile instance of the change, as Brian Kelly chose to make Floyd jump through several hoops to get back to the football team rather than simply suspend him. But the haters were out for blood when Floyd ultimately didn't miss any games (again, for a DUI six months prior to the season opener).

The problem with that line of thinking? By pretty much every account, the hoops Kelly made Floyd jump through served him much better as a person than just booting him off the team would have. He hasn't been in any trouble since and was a first-round pick in 2012. And it's not like Kelly hasn't suspended guys since for this stuff. Cierre Wood, ND's most talented running back in 2012, missed the first two games last year on suspension because of marijuana. ND was tied in the final minutes of one of those games at least in part because Wood wasn't playing.

As for Rees and Calabrese...I'm not sure how much I begrudge them, because the South Bend police is pretty infamous locally for viewing ND player arrests as trophies. There's a well-known and possibly (but probably not) apocryphal story about a South Bend cop busting into a party and yelling, "Where's Clausen?" in reference to ex-ND player Jimmy Clausen. (Jimmy wasn't there.) Clausen also got arrested once for driving an of-age friend to a liquor store and sitting in his car outside it, a charge you literally could not make unless the person was well-known enough for you to know how old he was without checking ID.

And at the time of Calabrese's arrest, he was of age too, so there were really no grounds for getting on his case. So if he drunkenly said "My people will get you", an unintentionally hilarious homage to his Italian/Jersey heritage, I'm pretty sure I'm on his side there.

"Notre Dame is overrated by the pollsters!" - This one is stupid, too, because every single name-brand program is overrated by the pollsters. I remember in 2009, when Texas played a very weak schedule by their standards and needed a replay review to put time back on the clock in the Big 12 title game to even get to the national championship. Both Cincinnati and TCU had legitimate arguments at the time to be ranked ahead of Texas given their respective schedules, and all three were unbeaten. Guess which one got to the title game? (Yep.) Guess what Alabama did to them? (Yep.)

And while Notre Dame certainly gets its share of breaks from the guys who make the rankings, I'm pretty sure only one team in the history of college football has dropped in the polls TWICE in one season after winning a game - 2006 Notre Dame. Including a week one drop after beating Georgia Tech in Atlanta. And what did the teams behind them do that week to earn the jump? Beat tomato cans in their home stadium.

And last year, when there were for a short time four major unbeatens (ND, Alabama, K-State and Oregon), guess who every single pundit in the known universe had ranked fourth among them? Yep.

Sure ND gets a helping hand. But it doesn't seem to me to be any bigger than the ones a Michigan or a Texas or an Ohio State get, too.

"Notre Dame was racist for firing Tyrone Willingham!" - Thankfully, these people are all but gone since Willingham ran Washington into the ground and Charlie Weis and Brian Kelly combined to underscore what Willingham was doing to the Irish by picking up ND's recruiting as soon as they arrived. But if you still think they were racist for axing Ty, you can check out the older posts of mine called "Rebutting Jason Whitlock" in the archive on the right.

"You're a homer and you're not rational!" - This one might just be one I get. I don't know. But I assume several people do. This one's not exclusive to Notre Dame either.

Damn right I'm a homer. If you're not a homer at least to some degree, I'm not sure how much I want to talk sports with you regardless of your team because that probably means you don't care as much as I do. (Again, that's fine - I just prefer to talk to people who care, probably too much.) And while I'm extremely irrational during games and usually the rest of the day following, once the dust has settled and I've gotten a chance to look things over, I'd like to think I'm pretty fair.

To use one example, I was roundly excoriated for implying that Oregon might lose to Stanford on Nov. 17 because at the time Oregon appeared unstoppable and the person I was arguing with probably just assumed I was grasping at a straw that Stanford was good because I wanted ND to look good for having beaten them. Well, I noticed that Oregon hadn't played anyone with a half-decent defense and I knew Stanford had a very good one. Turned out, Oregon scored 14 points against Stanford. And lost. I'm not right a whole lot, but I tooted my own horn on that one. And then 6 weeks later, I was loud wrong when Alabama destroyed Notre Dame. It happens. Sometimes - probably more often than not - I'm wrong. Everyone is.

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There are probably more of these that I'll think of later, and maybe I'll add them later - since this is, essentially, my own journal that hardly anyone reads. But I just wanted to get some thoughts on the page. If you still think I'm a horribly biased homer who can't stand when anyone criticizes the blue and gold for any reason, then you're entitled to think that. (I certainly care more about them than any sports team - probably because it's the only one that I had passed on to me by my family rather than just choosing essentially at random myself.)

However, if you happen to agree with me that I'm just a run-of-the-mill homer who tries his best to think reasonably on whatever sports issue that pops up, that's great too. Let me know. We'll confab.